In Dialogue
Julia S. Powell, Kitchen Morning, 2024. Oil on canvas
MFA Boston Curator of Painting Katie Hanson visited the studio of the landscape painter Julia S. Powell. The resulting interview gives us an insight into Powell’s artistic process and her concept of a “fiction painter,” one that creates work at the intersection of abstraction and realism. Besides references to contemporary Impressionism, the interview addresses creating thickly-layered artworks that inspire introspection and acceptance of previous experiences—especially the unwanted ones. These layers serve as metaphors for embracing past struggles without regret. Powell’s work also provides an emotional refuge as a response to a chaotic and increasingly anxious life.
Katie Hanson: As someone who lives with your paintings and looks at them every day, I’m really interested in your process. What is the jumping off point for a new work of art? Do you see something around you and look for the right canvas, or do you start with the blank page and go from there?
Julia S. Powell: I work in series. Right now, I’m interested in painting flowers and vases and trying to find a sort of hybrid, abstract, realistic version of vases and then different flower combos with colors. I just focus on the theme usually for a couple of months. And what starts the theme is just a vision of whatever it is that I’m painting. I think it was around Valentine’s Day. My father passed away in July, and he loved Valentine’s Day. It was our first Valentine’s Day without him. And so a lot of people sent us all these different flower combos for Valentine’s Day, and I was looking at the different vases, and that’s how it started.
I don’t know the exact subject of what I will do after this. Probably light filtering through trees and deep woods because I have a commission focused on that and I think conveying that feeling will occupy my mind for a while. And I’m trying to paint bigger and bigger. Basically everything I paint small I would love to scale up to 60” x 60” canvases or larger.
KH: I was also thinking about your process that I know some of your paintings have another painting—or an idea or an attempt at a painting—underneath. I know that’s the case for my water lilies. I just wonder what that moment is like when you make the decision and that first big stroke toward abandoning the first concept and covering it with a new work.
JP: It’s very intuitive and not planned. I’m a very planful person, except when it comes to my paintings, and then it’s much more of an in the moment process. I have a large Instagram following [222k+ followers @juliaspowellart] and I will post something. And it is like getting feedback from 10,000 people about what is resonating with them. And obviously, what’s popular is not always good, and what’s good is not always popular. The more abstract it is, the harder it is to resonate with a popular audience. I get all of that. But I do think that in general a consensus on a piece can be pretty darn helpful. So I consider how people are interacting with the piece. That’s part of it. And the second part is my own experience with the piece. After some time, do I still love it or am I bored of it? And then at that point, I’ll make a decision.
Left: Julia S. Powell, Repose, 2025. Oil on canvas. Right: Julia S. Powell, Birdsong, 2025. Oil on canvas.
This piece on the left was flowers, it was a whole flower garden. You can even see some of the lines at the bottom which were stems. And this is now my absolute favorite abstract water reflection. And this piece on the right was a completely different skyscape. I mean, just wildly different, completely different colors and even some buildings in the distance. And that next piece that is green hills – that used to be a barn and a pasture and a tree. And in all of them there’s texture that’s popping up beneath. And these painted over paintings are among my favorite pieces. They are like a metaphor of life—where every layer of experience is a foundation of who we become. So the painting over does often get me to a final place that I love. I don’t really know when I decide – but once I commit, I commit. I know there will be a point of regret. And then I will get past that point and love it. And if I don’t, I’ll paint over it again!
KH: I’ve seen yours described as a “contemporary impressionist approach,” and wonder if you might say a little bit more about how you see your art and practice in dialogue with historical Impressionism.
JP: I think about this a lot. When I started researching the impressionists around five years ago, I couldn’t believe how many similarities there were that I had never thought about before.
One is that they hate black. I hate black. I never use black. I try to mix dark colors, just like they did, in order to come up with darker tones. I like color, bright color. And in order to dull it out, I combine it with other colors. I also don’t like mixing my colors in a way that would blend or muddy them. Those pops of color – that’s classic impressionist. I think the way that they wanted to create texture with paint and not have it be thin layers, that’s exactly what I do. So, to the extent that color and texture were part of their technique, I think that’s very related. They were less obsessed with creating something that looks exactly like a field or a house and more interested in creating a transitory moment of light and movement. That’s where you get the “impression.” And I’m trying to create an impression of something, the mood, and not the actual physical realistic copy. I think people admire the technique of a photorealist, but it doesn’t pull at them the way that an impression does. And the impression also jumps you back to your own experience – say, you’re a child on a lake with your grandmother and there was a field and light. That’s what it brings back. And that is exactly what I’m trying to do as a painter. Elicit a powerful emotional response from the viewer that is entirely personal to their own experiences in life.
KH: As a curator of Impressionist painting, that’s something that I hear a lot from visitors, is how much the works of art remind them of something, usually a place, in their own lives. It pulls, as you were saying, on the heart and emotion and also on memory and nostalgia. That is part of the gift of it, is its openness.
JP: Exactly. I often think of myself as a contemporary fiction painter. I’m trying to create believable fiction, but it is fiction. And often when people are reading fiction, they can put in their own experiences. And you have empathy. It’s a whole different experience than if you’re reading a history or a memoir.
KH: Speaking of the 19th century and of Impressionism, some of those artists, like Monet, were more solitary painters and others, like Renoir, were more social. So I wondered if you’re quite solitary in your painting or do you ever paint side-by-side with others?
JP: What’s interesting about the solitary versus social question is that even though I am the only artist in my studio, I don’t paint as a solitary person.
First of all, when my children are home from school they are in and out of the studio all the time yelling and occasionally offering their very sophisticated (they are 5 and 2) opinions of my art. And second of all, I’m constantly, constantly on the phone when I’m painting, talking to friends. I’m very social and I’m very loyal, so if I’m a friend of yours, I don’t give you up even if you’ve moved. So a friend will live in Houston or Los Angeles or San Francisco or Denver or New York and we’re just chatting and I’m working and they’re like, what are you doing? It sounds like you’re scraping. It’s very rarely quiet in here.
Left: Julia S. Powell, Light Meadow from the series Flower Fields, 2025. Oil on wood.
Right: Julia S. Powell, Wild Mountain Thyme, 2025. Oil on canvas.
KH: Oh, that’s interesting! Do you ever paint outside?
JP: I do not do en plein air. I don’t do it because the few times I did it, there were so many bugs that flew into the paint and I don’t know how the Impressionists dealt with that. I’m honestly like logistically curious how they did that. Maybe I need more bug spray, a better easel. The other thing I’ll say about plein air is as I like to paint bigger pieces, the idea of like hiking through some area and finding the spot … it seems challenging with very large canvases.
KH: You so beautifully describe your paintings as on a balance between abstraction and realism. So how do you know when to stop? How do you know when that balance is struck?
JP: I really do have a little test. And the test is because, the more abstract it is, the more I like it. Just generally, I wish to go bigger and abstract, but still try to maintain a sense of reality. So what I do is I try to go as abstract as I can and then I ask my 5-year-old what the heck it is that she’s looking at. And if she is like that’s a path and I’m like, no, that’s supposed to be a river. Then I have not correctly done it. I have not threaded the needle. A 5-year-old has to be able to look at it and come up somewhat conceptually with what it is. That’s my test.
KH: I love how family is part of the process. You wear a lot of hats professionally. For example, you maintain a very robust online profile via social media. Do you find that it energizes your creative practice?
JP: Yes, 100%, very surprisingly. Instagram and having this audience that is essentially critiquing and judging whatever I post at all times—I’m more prolific because of it. When I finish a piece, almost always, I think that it’s brilliant. And then I post it. And then there’s like a little bit of distance and either I’m like, oh, that’s good. I’m proud of it. Or I’m like, oh my God, this is horrible what was I thinking. But depending on interactions with thousands of people, I can get a sense of what’s working or what isn’t with a general audience. So it feels like a constant stream of gallery visitors.
I do think it makes my work stronger. And also I look at my feed and I’m like, Ooh, you have been posting 20 sunsets in a row. Time to mix it up. Time to try something different. Why are people not engaging with the account right now? Maybe they’re feeling like this is a tired approach. But it’s nice because I don’t feel that it pushes me to do things I don’t want to do. I want my art to reach an audience but also be taken seriously. So I’m always trying to strike that balance, but I think it totally energizes me. And I get so many lovely comments. Some people’s accounts are inundated with sort of hateful things and social media can be super negative, but that’s not been my experience. It’s just been kind people saying kind things.
KH: Thinking still about audience, but shifting to a different kind of audience: what about the world of galleries and fairs as relates to your work in particular, or to landscape painting more general?
JP: What is it about landscape painting that historically has always resonated with people if done in an interesting way, but for some reason it’s just not seen as cool or contemporary, I don’t know. But there’s factually fewer landscape painters that are represented by top contemporary galleries. If you look at like Frieze or Art Basel you do not see as much landscape painting. And historically the Impressionists were not accepted at first and I just find that interesting because I feel like an outsider. I do. And the Impressionists did as well and now of course they’re probably the most accepted, the most popular.
KH: Thinking about that historically, in terms of the French Academy, traditionally the highest valued art was narrative. And it’s the combination of excellent rendering of the human body and of gestures to tell a story and then placing it all in a setting. There’s this centrality of ideas and story-telling. And, so as you were describing feeling like an outsider in the contemporary art scene and the works that get into shows and museums, I wonder if landscape paintings are still in that same sort of long arc of history. Beautiful landscapes are open and evocative, but not narrative.
JP: It’s interesting because, narrative and conceptual paintings – those paintings activate. They energize and activate and sometimes make you angry or tense. I would argue that the contemporary art scene – much like the French Academy – emphasizes art that activates and deemphasizes art that calms or soothes.
But in fact, what humans like just as much, if not more, is calming art. Which is why I think the Impressionists did so well. Activist, activating art or art that is really in your face is very important. It’s just not what I do. And sometimes I wonder if paintings that provide a refuge from this crazy world are not taken as seriously. And what I’m trying to do is have that taken seriously. Have that purpose of art taken seriously.
KH: That’s a beautiful way of putting it.
JP: There are landscape painters, it’s not necessarily even me, that are pushing the genre in such cool ways and they’re never in the big fairs or galleries. And it’s like, what would the Impressionists be painting now? I still think they would do landscape, but they would be doing it in a very interesting way.
Now available, The Pillowpuffs (Helios House Press, 2025), Julia S. Powell’s first children’s book, reminds children and grown-ups of slowing down to appreciate the world around us.
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About the Artist: Julia S. Powell (b. in Boston, MA) paints landscapes that navigate the intersection between realism and abstraction, revealing a dialogue between materiality and memory. Powell transforms natural elements—light through trees, water reflections, flowers, horizon lines—into thoughtful responses to contemporary anxiety and depression. Powell is a member of the Quin House Boston and the Copley Society of Art (Co|So). Powell’s paintings may be found in numerous private collections across the US, Canada, Europe, and Asia. Her paintings have been sold at auction at the New Britain Museum of American Art and the Peabody Essex Museum. She was chosen as the VIP print artist for the Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) Boston 2017 Summer Gala. She graduated from Stanford Law School and Yale University.
About the Curator-Interviewer: Katie Hanson, PhD, is the William and Ann Elfers Curator of European Paintings at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston. She has contributed to many exhibitions and publications at the MFA, including Van Gogh: The Roulin Family Portraits (2025); Monet and Boston: Legacy Illuminated (2021); Cézanne: In and Out of Time (2020); Klimt and Schiele: Drawn (2018); French Pastels: Treasures from the Vault (2018); Pairing Picasso (2016). Further afield, she organized the touring exhibition French Impressionism from the MFA Boston with the National Gallery of Victoria (2021 & 2025). Next up for her at the MFA are Renoir in Love (2026-27) with Musée d’Orsay and National Gallery London, and Degas Portraits: Facing Modernity (2027-28) with the Städel Museum.